Radiocarbon dating of the dead sea scrolls

Fragments of every book of the Old Testament (Hebrew canon) have been discovered, except for the book of Esther.

Now identified among the scrolls are 19 fragments of Isaiah, 25 fragments of Deuteronomy and 30 fragments of the Psalms.

These include Wadi Daliyeh, Masada, Wadi Seyal, Wadi Murabba’at and Khirbet Mird. Four of the scrolls tested—from the non-Qumran sites bore dates within the document, ranging from the mid-fourth century B. The probability that the document falls within the black bar (or bars) is 68 percent (one sigma).

Eisenman objects that neither he nor any other outsider was included in the group managing and monitoring the tests. In no other case did they get this difference between samples subjected to differing cleaning procedures.It is unlikely, however, that additional C-14 tests will be conducted in the foreseeable future. George Bonani, Magen Broshi, Israel Garmi, Susan Ivy, John Strugnell, Willy Wolfli, “Radiocarbon Dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” ‘Atiqot 20 (July 1991), pp. The second is George Bonani, Susan Ivy, Willy Wolfli, Magen Broshi, Israel Garmi and John Strugnell, “Radiocarbon Dating of Fourteen Dead Sea Scrolls,” Radiocarbon, forthcoming (1991).I thank George Bonani of Zurich for freely providing BAR with a prepublication copy of this article and explaining some of the testing procedures.Most of the texts are written in Hebrew and Aramaic, with a few in Greek.The Dead Sea Scrolls appear to be the library of a Jewish sect, considered most likely the Essenes.